Astral Century Battle Station
The Astral Century Battle Surveillance Station is a Shard that appears to be one of many such workrooms of a massive spaceship. Appearance The only explorable and visible part of the Astral Century's surveillance station is a single huge-ceiling room of metal and machinery. The chamber is about fifteen feet in diameter, barely large enough to house a battle of any kind, especially not with the huge swathes of computers, monitors, dangling wires, and desk seats that are around the chamber. Though the chamber does not look very large, it has been recorded that actually engaging in an activity or battle there temporarily expands the amount of open, empty space. This hypothesis has yet to be proven. The main fixture of the surveillance station is the gigantic wall of computer monitors that cover 90% of three walls. By default the actual display on the monitors is haphazard and random; some will be off, some will showcase a screensaver of space and a small identification caption (which is how the name of the ship was determined in the first place), and some will be running an endless string of very densely composed data and terminal commands. Only a handful of screens will show what appears to be camera footage of a random location or Shard that appears to be real-time in nature. It is unknown how this is possible, for no sort of cameras or recording devices have ever been found in the locations shown within the station. Leaving the chamber causes one to leave the territory of the Shard. Phenomena Much like the Laboratories, the true nature of the Battle Station could only be revealed by bringing along a field agent skilled enough with electronics to activate one of the various computer terminals. Unlike the Labs, though, the Battle Station is more immediately useful, and infinitely less dangerous. Activation and confirmation through a system of coding that was orders of magnitude more advanced than one seen by any agent available (save Seike, perhaps) turned on all of the monitors covering the walls. Once activated, their default state is to show a larger version of the random surveillance footage with the visuals blown up and distributed across every monitor in the room. The result is an ultra-high definition panoptic view of a random Shard or location in Sundry. Locations shown cannot be changed without leaving the Shard and returning some as-of-yet undefined amount of time later. (It is possible that the surveillance can be controlled, but use of the data terminals has proved too difficult to discover that feature yet.) Observed random locations include: *Twilight Tower *Crystallized Kornelia *Sea Palace *Ark of Genesis *Tower of Mirages *Great Reaper Palace (Outside) *Arena *Remains While the surveillance's area of focus cannot be controlled or edited yet, attempts to understand the control systems of the monitors have uncovered what appears to be a sort of weather control system. By using very specific commands with a very specific frame of time, it has been possible to directly tamper with the locations that appear in the surveillance video feeds. Observed effects on the locations include: *Precipitation - command REDACTED can induce precipitation native to the area in the video feed. The most common form is rain, though snow and bone-rain have been observed in the locations they can occur in. For indoor locales, the precipitation command caused debris to fall from the ceiling like a rain. *Atmospheric Setting - can apparently tamper with the amount of and composition of various chemicals in the atmosphere of the area located. Effects are impossible to notice qualitatively, and must be monitored through the displays of the monitors in the station. As proven with Field Study #REDACTED, one of the second joint-study wave, forcing the atmosphere of a locale to change into levels that are somehow fatal induces unconsciousness in any breathing human in the area being watched. Victims did not suffer lethal damage, though, and awoke from their coma-like rest once being removed from the area in question. *Targeting - command string REDACTED can induce a third of the screens to display a sort of heads-up display, and a crosshair appears on the screen. The crosshair appears to be a sort of targeting system. Unfortunately, the HUD system fades after a minute without use, and explorers have yet to be able to figure out how to move the crosshair / decipher the futuristic script on the display / fire whatever sort of weapon is being summoned. All of the atmospheric tampering that can be induced by the terminals fade upon the explorer leaving the shard and/or their entrance into another. As proven by Field Study #REDACTED, for those within the area being surveilled, the effects will indeed fade as soon as the explorer leaves/enters their shard, regardless of whether or not they ever re-entered the observed area. Observed Inhabitants *Maria Zorphan *Hero *Richter D'Arque Field Notes — Category:Locations Category:Luminous Society